“Not unlike Richard Nash leaving Soft Skull, I feel like the next steps are going to be taken not by an industry that works together, but a rogue editor who breaks from the pack and goes it solo.”

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Julie Wilson, Seen Reading

Publishing Eats the World

by rnash |August 13th, 2015

So I’d love to tell the assembled technorati at South by Southwest about all the great writing and publishing being done by non-publishers (or at least entities that are not [yet] aware they are, in fact, publishers.) Herewith my spiel and, if you think it worthy, give me a thumbs-up?

For centuries the world outsourced narrative and knowledge distribution to publishers—scientists, storytellers, doctors, chefs all. Now that “publish is a button,” content is abundant. But its abundance had been abused, like fossil fuels’ and foods’ abundance. Print is a button, but how can content be used effectively. Drawing on examples raging for the pervasive (Red Bull) to the unexpected (the personalized medicine start-up Cure Forward) we explore the world beyond content marketing, understanding where content transforms onboarding, creating all the motivations needed to discover, learn, and engage with any given product, as publishing becomes insourced.